Wedgwood Urges American People to Assume More Responsibility for Palestine

September 9, 1941

LONDON (Sep. 8)

Urging the American people and government to think about their responsibility toward the future of Palestine, Col. Josiah Wedgwood, pro-Zionist member of Parliament, today denounced the “complete failure” of the appeasement policy toward the Arabs during the last twenty years, which led “to the continual suppression of the Jewish National Home.”

In an address before the Anglo-Palestine Club Col. Wedgwood declared that Americans have fallen into the habit of thinking that Palestine is exclusively a British affair, but that this attitude would have to change. Since America, is to a large extent paying for the war, the Zionist M.P. said, and since Washington will play a great part in any peace settlement, what happens to Palestine will largely depend on America.

Warning that Palestine was still in risk of invasion, he charged that “it is the worst scandal in modern times” that its 500,000 Jews are left unarmed. He demanded creation of a Jewish army in Palestine.